Bloodhound set for blast off after Geely partnership announceed

The sponsorship will get the 1,000mph jet and rocket powered LSR contender back on track to make its debut runs and attempt an 800mph LSR record in South Africa next October. At present the plan is to return in 2018 to attempt to achieve 1,000mph. Zhejiang Geely Holding Group (ZGH), which owns Volvo Cars and London Taxi, becomes the team's lead sponsor, providing chase cars, know-how and funds.

Geely's backing was instigated by company founder and chairman, Li Shufu, who saw a model of the 7.8-tonne, 13.5-metre-long, Bloodhound constructed out of K'Nex modelling toys displayed at a special exhibition at the Coventry Transport Museum.

"He was opening a new factory in Coventry," says Mark Chapman, Bloodhound chief engineer. "He had some time to spare, went to the Transport Museum, saw the model and said; 'that looks really cool, we should get involved'."

Chapman says that while the main part of Bloodhound's design is done, Geely will be able to supply valuable technical input on noise reduction around the cockpit area and also in modelling the natural frequencies of the car against its components, which is crucial at the super high speeds the car will attain. Jaguar will continue to supply its 800bhp Jaguar AJ133, five-litre F-type V8 engine to drive the rocket's fuel pump.

Chapman also says the Chinese car maker will help to expand the project's education program across China and Asia. "It fits with what is already going on," he says. "When we launched the website almost the highest hit rate was across China."

He is also unconcerned about any security aspects of a Chinese involvement in the project which uses a Ministry of Defence EJ200 Typhoon military jet engine.

"We do have sensitive intellectual property on the car," he says, "but it doesn't change how we deal with it, just as we don't let Nammo Group [Norwegian Rocket Motor makers] access to the Euro Fighter data and vice versa, we won't be sharing any data with Geely."

At the same time, the team has announced its second major rocket motor swap for the car, which started with a hybrid rocket from Daniel Jubb of the Falcon Project, switched to a hybrid rocket from Nammo Group and is now switching to Nammo's mono-propellant rocket motor.

"Ideally we need between 40 and 50 Kilo Newtons (kN) of thrust," says Chapman, "and [Nammo's] current hybrid motor providing thrust on decomposing peroxide provides 30 to 35kN, so that is slightly under what we wanted to be really safe and confident on getting an 800mph record next year.

Nammo suggested using its mono-propellant rocket motor instead which should provide between 40 and 45kN of thrust, while also providing other benefits.

"With the hybrid rocket we'd have to take the motor out and put it back in," says Chapman, "where the mono-propellant engine means we only have to refuel at the end of each run and that's not from the hot end of the car. It's simple, you can turn it on and off, we can run it as many times as we like and it piggy backs onto a development program at Nammo."

The team is aiming at runway tests for Bloodhound at St Mawgan airfield in North Cornwall next July before going to its specially prepared 11.8-mile track on Hakskeen Pan in the North of South Africa in early October.